BULLY KING
Page 27
But he’s not cheating. He’s just… smart.
And I’m not. “I’m an inconsiderate little prick who thinks that this good life I’ve been provided is a right instead of a privilege. I’m also greedy, stupid, lazy, and will never amount to anything.”
Mona sighs. She’s the only one who knows what these words mean.
“My father was right about me,” I say. “He saw it a long time ago and that’s why he didn’t like me. That’s why I was never the favorite. I was weak. And he hates weakness. I was all those things for my entire fucking life. And then one day…” I look at Cadee. “One day another secret was dropped into my lap like a gift. Only this time, I wasn’t going to be a coward about it.”
“Now,” Dante says. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Did you know?”
He nods. “Yeah, I knew. Laurie is my aunt.”
“What?”
“Yeah. She really did get a call from that storage unit. There was a flood. A pipe burst. And they called saying someone needed to come check on things in case they needed to add it to their insurance claim. I was there when the call came in and told her I would take care of it. I had already been up to Poplar Creek. I had already been through all the boxes.”
“Then why did you need me?”
“Listen, Cooper,” Dante says. “You’re not the only asshole in this room.” He looks at everyone in turn, lingering on Lars for some reason. “We all know things.” He nods his head to Lars. “You know why Ax doesn’t sleep at home, Lars. And you do nothing. You just let it happen. And you have been letting it happen for years. So if you’re starting to feel special and righteous, you better take a good long look at yourself first.” Dante looks back at me. “I needed you, Cooper. The only way my plan works is if you’re the one who makes the threat.”
“What are we talking about?” Cadee asks. “What storage unit?”
I explain that day. Tell them what I found in the boxes.
And that’s when they all begin to understand the full extent of Dante’s plan.
I show up at the tomb wearing a pair of faded jeans with rips in the thighs, a white t-shirt that says ‘Your hole is my goal,’ and a pair of black Docs. I raided Ax’s wardrobe for this and I like the look so much, I might keep it. I even like the chain wallet. Lars let me borrow his mirrored sunglasses for the occasion. Because this is one for the books. And I only get one chance to do it right.
Dante is dressed in a tux like everyone else. And Mona is hanging on his arm looking like a queen in a red silk gown.
They are the only pledges here aside from me.
The rest of the party is all old guard. Parents and siblings. Lake-house people who invented the game, I guess, and think it’s going to last forever.
It’s not.
My father spies me as I exit the woods and I allow myself a wave of pure satisfaction when his face contorts into an expression of controlled rage.
He’s crossing the narrow clearing and then he’s got me by the arm and is yanking me back into the trees. “What the fuck are you wearing? And where is everyone? You’re ten minutes late.”
We stop far enough away from the tomb that no one can hear us. And that’s fine. They don’t all need to be threatened, he’ll do for now. “I’m on my way to a party, Dad.” I smile when that word comes out. “So I’m dressed for the occasion.”
“The occasion is black tie, Christopher. And where the hell have you been? We got home three days ago and you haven’t been there once.”
“No.” I laugh and wave my hand in the direction of the tomb. “Not this party. And I don’t live at home anymore. I moved out three weeks ago.”
“You moved—” He laughs. “This is it, Cooper. I’m done playing with you. You will get nothing from me. Nothing, do you hear me?”
“Oh, I’m so over your money, Dad. So you can save your breath. I’m only here to explain how things are gonna go down from now on.”
He laughs again, still not getting it. “You’re going to explain something to me?”
“Yup. And you’re going to listen.”
“I hope you’re not counting on a college degree to get anywhere in life, Christopher. Because you won’t be returning to school next month.”
“Well.” I scratch my neck. “You’re wrong about that. I will be in school. And all the other pledges will be there too.”
“Where are they? What did you do with them?”
“Do with them?” Now it’s my turn to laugh. “I got them out, that’s what I did with them. Just like that girl at the graduation party that night you had me arrested. I bet her father is still pissed off about that night, isn’t he? Anyway,” I wave my hand in the air. “My pledges aren’t coming tonight. Those two assholes over there?” I nod my head to Dante and Mona. “That’s the cream of the crop. And the extent of your new Fang and Feather members. Everyone else is out. Including Isabella.” I glare at him. “So you make sure and tell her father she’s done. She’s with me now. While you assholes were all out here tailgating before the big event, she was moving her shit out of their mansion. And if her father tries to come get her, or Ax’s father gets any big ideas about letting his crazy mother beat him as punishment, or any of the other families even speak to my pledges, they’re gonna have to answer to you.”
“What are you talking about?” He guffaws. “You’ve gone crazy, Christopher.”
“No.” I sigh. “I’ve finally wised up, old man. You see…” I lean in and smile. “I found your little storage unit this summer.”
He backs up a little.
“Yup. Went through every box. I have spent the entire three years since Dane raped Cadee telling myself it was a one-off thing. Telling myself that it was a secret only I knew about. Wow.” I huff. “Was I ever stupid. You know I get it now, Dad. Why you always hated me. I was pretty fucking dumb.” I narrow my eyes at him. “But there’s a cure for stupid. It’s called the truth. And I found a whole lot of truth about Dane in that storage facility. Cadee wasn’t the only one. She was just one among many, wasn’t she? And when her father found out about one of the other girl’s Dane raped and didn’t take your bribe—”
“That’s enough!”
“Oh, no. I’m just getting started, Dad. You killed him. You killed Cadee’s father. And then somehow her mother found out too. They really were moving, weren’t they? Because she knew and she was done. And you know the funny thing? Well, it’s not funny. It’s really fucking sad, actually. She was never going to say anything. You didn’t need to kill her too. She was taking her daughter and moving far, far away. But you jumped the gun, didn’t you? Got a little scared. Thought you could bribe Cadee. And that almost worked. If I had just. Done. My job. She’d have been your quiet little minion.”
“What are you doing?” He says this with a straight face too. Like… wow. The balls on this man. They are bull-sized.
“What am I doing?” I laugh so loud, he looks over his shoulder to see if any of his cronies heard me. “I’m threatening you.” I take a few steps forward and lean in to his face. “If you come near me, or any of the missing pledges, or any of the people who are now part of my new on-campus society—all that hush money you spent will be for nothing. Because your secrets—all those secrets—will go out into the world and finally everyone will know who and what you really are.”
I say it like I’ve been practicing this speech and waiting for this day since my mother died when I was five.
Dane wasn’t the only secret in those boxes.
That place was my father’s vault.
We now have dirt on all of them.
I leave that last part unsaid. He knows what I found.
“I wish I could say it was nice knowing you, Dad. But the truth is the last twenty-one years were practically unbearable. You make me tired. And I’m done dealing with you.”
I spit his own words right back at him.
And I even give it a little time to sink in.
Cadee, Ax, and Lars are waiting for me in our new piece-of-shit Camaro on the blacktop road in front of my family mansion. I walk around to the passenger side and get in, then smile at Ax and say, “It’s done.”
He nods, puts the car in gear, and we roar away towards our new home at the Old Alumni Inn.
Meet the new ruling class of High Court College.
Our motto is: They can’t ruin us if we ruin them first.
And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.
RULING CLASS
Ruling Class
Kings of High Court College #2
By JA Huss
Bully Romance
GET IT ON AMAZON
You want the diamonds?
You want the mansion?
You want the lake, and boats, and the cars?
You want the security?
And the man?
Then you do what you’re told.
I live in his castle.
I sit at his feet.
I wear his collar.
I am his offering.
The Chosen Ones… the Ruling Class.
They are a breed apart.
And yes, that pedigree matters.
Not just anyone can rise above and become their equal.
It takes sacrifice.
Ruling Class is the final book in the Kings of High Court College Duet by New York Times bestselling author, JA Huss. It is a dark bully romance with triggers.
END OF BOOK SHIT
Welcome to the End of Book Shit. This is the part of the book where I get to say anything I want about the story. It’s not edited and there will probably be some typos, so please ignore that shit. This is mostly just about the message.
I started writing an EOBS for this book a few days ago because I need this final chapter before I can put the paperback up and then order author copies. And I was a little bit stuck on it. I had maybe a thousand words. But they didn’t feel like meaningful words, so I put it aside and did something else.
It’s always a good idea to put writing aside when the ideas aren’t flowing. You can keep going. I’ve done it before. And in the case of some writers, you can actually do a whole book like that. You really can pull words out of your ass and hit publish.
But it’s almost never worth it.
The real reason I was writing the EOBS that day was because I was working on book two, Ruling Class, and I was stuck. It wasn’t writer’s block. I don’t do writer’s block. I just didn’t have a good scene set up for the next chapter and I’ve been doing this whole writing thing long enough now to take a break when that happens and do something else.
But the EOBS for Bully King and the next chapter of Ruling Class are related. Same story. So neither of these projects were going anywhere.
It’s stressful to stop writing a story (or an EOBS) because everything I write has a deadline. And I’m constantly counting days and words to make that deadline. I’m on a tight deadline for Ruling Class so taking time away from it isn’t helpful. And I had already taken a whole week off because I got injured and needed to recover.
But… there is no point in forcing the writing. Even if I want to.
So I decided to proof the audiobook for Bully King instead. It was a two-day job. And it helped a lot because I literally had to read and listen to every single word of Bully King.
It was nice though. I don’t normally produce my own audiobooks, I have a publisher. So I don’t proof them, they do all that for me. This was the first book I’ve done outside my publisher since 2015, I think. But it gave me a lot of time to focus on the story and the characters, which was very helpful for Ruling Class and I was only about two hours into the proofing before I had all fresh ideas for book two and was eager to get back to writing.
But I was still stuck on this EOBS. I figure if I’m going to write them then they should say something. They should carry some weight, add to the story itself, and be meaningful.
I’ve haven’t been on social media a lot lately. Deadlines, and the injury, and then, of course, I loathe politics. But I went to Facebook like an hour ago and saw two posts. One was something about current events (that nobody even knows is true or not, but people were all angry about it already) and the second one was about a reader who was upset that her favorite author unfriended her (presumably over some opinion she posted.)
And both of these things made me sad.
The first one because posting that current event (that might not even be true) was only about taking someone else down. It was a hateful post masquerading as self-righteous indignation.
And the second one because I felt for that reader. She is allowed to have an opinion (and I don’t know what she posted. Maybe she deserved that unfriending) and in a perfect world we would all be able to respect each other when we disagree.
But our world is far from perfect.
So then, even though I don’t like to make public statements of any kind, I decided to put up a post making a public statement. It was a very simple post that said: I don’t understand why people waste time on hate. Hate is such a waste of time.
And then I started thinking about people I have hated in the past. I had very good reasons for this hate. Like… I’m talking what happened to me was fucking Lifetime Movie of the Week kinda shit. I will put my past suffering up against ANYONE.
ANYONE.
I do care how fucking bad your life has been, MINE can compete. I might not win in the end, but no one would laugh, that’s for sure.
And then I started thinking… well, how did I get past it? How did I let it go and move forward?
And that memory of how I moved on came back to me in an instant.
Someone stole something from me. I’m not going to say what, but I will say it wasn’t a WHAT. It was a WHO. And it wasn’t about some girl stealing a guy. It was, as I said, Lifetime Movie of the Week kinda shit. It involved lawyers in two states, me making a fifteen-hundred mile road trip alone with a hundred-and-sixty-five dollars to my name, standing in front a judge crying and begging for help, and then finally, resolution and a very long drive home.
And when I got home, and things were calmer, I got a phone call from the asshole responsible for all that shit. And before he could even talk, I said, “I forgive you.”
That’s it. That’s all I said.
He was stunned, to stay the least. So I expounded. “I forgive you. It’s over. And I’m not going to waste one more second on what just happened. I’m going to forgive you and move on. Goodbye.”
And that was the end of it.
Because there is nothing else to do when something that horrible happens.
There is nothing else to do but forgive and move on.
The only other options and hate and anger.
And everyone who has ever been angry knows, deep down, that you’re an uglier person when you’re angry. And hate is the fuel for anger.
Yes, this terrible thing happened to me. But I was not going to waste another second of my life on hate and anger.
And I will say, right now, that wasn’t the end. It would take a few more years to really get away. And I did actually get revenge for all of it. No one was assassinated. lol It was a very legal revenge plan. So I’m not saying I’m like super evolved or anything. I’m human.
But that forgiveness was real. Everything that came after I didn’t control. That was all him.
The only thing I could control was how I reacted to him.
And as long as my reactions weren’t based on hate and anger, I would be fine.
And I was.
I win.
So this EOBS is about forgiveness.
It’s so fucking powerful.
Once you forgive—truly let it go and forgive—you’re free.
And that’s what Cadee decided to do in this book. She hasn’t articulated it yet because she’s still in denial. But s
he knew instinctively that letting things go was the only way forward.
I don’t forgive Cooper yet.
Lars certainly doesn’t.
Ax—maybe. Because he’s well-versed in hate and anger and he knows it’s a trap.
But we don’t matter. If Cooper was a real person and not just some character in a book, the only thing that would matter is that he is able to forgive himself.
And that’s a LOT harder than forgiving someone else.
We don’t forgive ourselves very often. Our mistakes stick with us for years. Decades. Sometimes a whole lifetime. The stick with us and manifest as guilt. They color us in a new way and unless we’re very aware that we made a mistake that led to this moment, we don’t often get off that path of self-destruction.
It is so much harder to forgive yourself. (Unless you’re a sociopath, that is.)
So if you’re thinking Cooper didn’t earn Cadee’s forgiveness—he doesn’t have to.
Her forgiveness isn’t about HIM. It’s about HER.
And if Cooper can forgive himself, that’s not about Cadee. It’s only about him.
And just like me when I forgave the asshole, it didn’t really make anything better in my life. The only thing that got better was my opinion of myself.
Because forgiveness isn’t about the person being forgiven.
It’s about the person doing the forgiving.
It is a magnanimous gesture. And the greater the sin, the more noble the act of forgiveness is.
You just have to let it go.
I respect Cadee Hunter. Obviously, she still has a lot to deal with. This is a duet. Neither Cadee nor Cooper are at the end of their road yet. So we’ll see what happens in book two.
But I hope, if you’re holding in some past anger and hate, that maybe you take some time to forgive whoever hurt you. You don’t even have to tell them. Just as long as you believe it.
Anyway, that’s it for me. This EOBS is done.